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Condos located in Battery Park City are located on leased land. The Battery Park City Authority is the holder of the tenant's interest in such leasehold interest. "Qualified leasehold condominium" is the form of condominium ownership in Battery Park City.

While the units themselves, together with their common interest, are deemed real property the land on which they stand is owned by the Battery Park City Authority.

Manhattan has a very open and efficient marketplace. High PILOT/Taxes in Battery Park due to ground rents keep prices down. When comparing a condo purchase in Battery Park vs. some other part of the city here's a quick way to calculate what we consider to be real costs.

If a $1 million condo in Battery Park has $20,000 in annual monthlies and a $1M condo in the Financial District has $10,000 in annual monthlies. You can capitalize the difference (let's say at a 5% cap rate). You would take the difference of $10,000 and divide it by 5%, giving you a real $200,000 price difference in today's dollars. So the $1M condo in Battery Park would "really" cost $1.2M when comparing apples with apples.

There is no fee simple ownership. The condos in Battery Park City don't own the land underneath the buildings. In this case, the buildings lease the land from the Battery Park City Authority, a public agency that was formed in the 1960s to develop the then-nascent neighborhood. The land-rent fees get rolled into the monthly condo fees that owners pay. In Battery Park City, the current amount paid toward ground rents range from about $30 dollars a month to several hundred dollars per condo unit, depending on the building.